"Ask for the job and sometimes demand...

WomanNews staffCHICAGO TRIBUNE

"Ask for the job and sometimes demand it."

--Brenda Gaines, retired president and CEO, North America, Diners Club International Ltd., a roundtable discussion last week in Chicago on women's clout in business, sponsored by the Committee of 200 and hosted by Northern Trust Co.

"[Women] want to look like Jean Harlow or Marilyn Monroe; they were icons ... the epitome of fashion. Nowadays you've got Britney Spears. Back then, the stars still had style and class."

"Any woman can come to my house alone ... I want my girlfriends to be attractive and smart, and they're always welcome, with or without a man."

--Borghese CEO and GOP fundraiser Georgette Mosbacher, on her famous parties, in Harper's Bazaar

"Quickly the sex differences jumped out. I noticed that the little girls were much more interested in watching their moms, while the little boys were running and roughhousing and making nuisances of themselves. The girls watched more carefully and for longer periods of times than the boys did, and they mastered the skill more quickly."

--Elizabeth Vinson Lonsdorf, director of field conservation at Lincoln Park Zoo, on her observations of the behavior of young chimpanzees while their mothers fished for termites, in Chicago

"Because I wasn't in love with Ram when I got married ... I didn't expect him to be my soulmate, sick nurse, best friend and red-hot lover all at the same time. My expectations of Ram were more realistic ... In arranged marriages, love comes later, as it had for my grandparents and parents, and as it did, finally, for me."

--Shoba Narayan, who went to college in the U.S. and spent five years dating before returning to India to consider an arranged marriage, in Glamour